Pink Floyd Drummer Thinks Record Labels Need To Get With The Program, “Work Harder”

According to Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, digital music is just another brick in the wall for music labels to break the barrier between their antiquated systems and modern technology.

Recently, Pink Floyd made their entire back-catalog available on Spotify to much success, said Mason to the Wall Street Journal via Classic Rock Magazine. “Wish You Were Here” was streamed a million times. “A lot of people have been streaming our music, and importantly also a lot of people who weren’t yet familiar with our music,” said Mason.

“Perhaps I would say something different if we were having this discussion a year and a half ago,” elaborated the drummer. “But now it’s becoming clear that streaming is not another form of piracy, and you can argue that more music is being listened to now than in the past.”

Despite their unmitigated success in the past, Mason says he has no idea if they would have become popular these days, what with the inundation of music: “Record companies can no longer afford to do the sort of development for new artists that they used to do. Launching new artists or bands has simply become too expensive for them now that their business model and their revenues are under pressure,” continued Mason. “We’re going to have to find other ways of identifying the grassroot talent out there. As artists we used to have a ladder that we needed to climb – but now it feels like the first four rungs are missing. Record companies need to work more comfortably with artists, or they will lose out.”